Goal update, July 2014

Another month has passed, so here’s another summary of how I’m doing on my goals. I wrote last month that I started getting back on track in June; I cycled and ran a lot, and turned my rough spring from minor weight gain back to minor weight loss. If June was solid then July was the month when I began feeling confident again. I kept my goals in sight through July, and everything is moving the right direction.

I set a new personal record for running this month. My first month ever over 100 miles. But I didn’t bike as much as I wanted to. My Trek suffered catastrophic derailer failure 10 miles from home on the Fourth of July. This destroyed the derailer, broke or damaged every spoke on the right side of the rear wheel, dinged up the hub, and bent the derailer hanger. The poor bike is unrideable. I got the hangar straightened out and picked up a new derailer, but I still need to rebuild the rear wheel before I can ride it again. I have been riding my single speed—sometimes fixed gear—Schwinn and I borrowed my dad’s bike for a ride around Ames, but to be honest the breakdown hurt my enthusiasm and I didn’t do many long rides this month.

I improved my weight, activity, and food tracking setup with the help of recent integration between myfitnesspal and Garmin Connect. Now myfitnesspal is acting as the bridge between the different online systems I use, glueing them all together—a little haphazardly—into one almost automated system as outlined below:

Weight: Every morning that I’m home I step on my Withings wifi scale, which uploads the data to Withings. From there it gets automatically downloaded to a small data file through IFTTT, and sent over to Runkeeper and myfitnesspal via their APIs. Once it is in myfitnesspal it gets automatically added to Garmin Connect via another API. It’s a bit convoluted, but the upside is that I step on the scale in the morning, and my various online services are all updated automatically. When I’m not home I use whatever scale is handy and record it manually, or skip weigh-in.

Activities: I track my general daily activity with a Garmin vívofit, which replaced my missing Fitbit. That data gets uploaded to Garmin Connect through the app on my iPhone. I record runs, bike rides, hikes, and so on with my fēnix 2, which also goes to Garmin Connect. Garmin sends this activity data to myfitnesspal, where it’s added to my estimated Calorie burn and daily goals. Incidentally, my Fitbit is somewhere in my apartment, because it still occasionally syncs with my phone; apparently it has a low battery.

Food: Food is the only manual part of my process now. I wish this could be automated but no such tool exists. I use myfitnesspal, which has most foods I eat, a good bar code scanner, and decent recipe tools. It can be hard to keep it up to date or remember to log everything, but I try. When I use it well I get a great picture of what helps me or hurts me.